Weekly D'Var

The Day that Really Lived on in Infamy

In last month’s Bulletin I quoted from the Mishnah Taanit 4:6 delineating the list of calamities that befell the Jews on Tisha B’ Av. In his Dvar Torah Jerry Kantor concentrated on the first of these calamities, the episode in which the spies came back from Canaan and issued a negative report about the land to which the Israelites were being led. But from where did the tradition that this occurred on Tisha B’Av ensue? 

Well, the march from Sinai to Transjordan is marked in Numbers 10:11 as beginning on the 20th day of the second month, i.e., 20 Iyar. In Numbers 10:33 it is announced that three days had elapsed, thus taking us to 23 Iyar. In Numbers 11:20 we are told that the Israelites will be sitting put for a whole month, while they receive enough meat that it comes out of their nostrils and is loathsome to them. Next, they set out from Kibroth-Hataavah to Hazeroth (Numbers 11:35), and upon their arrival Miriam and Aaron spoke out against Moses, resulting in Miriam being smitten with leprosy for seven days, and the Israelites did not march for seven days (Numbers 12:15). The Rabbis interpret this span of events as taking us to 29 Sivan (23 lyar +1 month = 22 Sivan; 22 Sivan + 7 days = 29 Sivan, is how the math is done in Taanit 29a.). 

At this point (Numbers 13) the spies are sent to Canaan, and returned at the end of forty days (Numbers 13:25). How does this get us to 9 Av? Sivan has 30 days, so we count 29 and 30 Sivan as two days; Tammuz has 29 days, but the Rabbis claim that in that year it had 30 days, and so the 40 days ended on 8 Av. We see in Numbers 14:1 that “the whole community broke into loud cries, and the people wept that night.” What night was that? The night of 8 Av, i.e., the eve of Tisha B’Av. 

The Talmud (in both Taanit 29a and Sotah 35a) cites a comment by Rabbah (290-320 CE) in the name of Rabbi Yochanan (250-290 CE), namely that God heard these cries and said, “You have wept without cause, therefore I will set this day aside for a weeping through the generations to come.” But this tradition is much older. Rabbis who preceded the redaction of the Mishnah (which occurred in 200 CE) had engaged in three major translation projects. The most famous of these were the translation of the Chumash into Greek by Aquilas, a Greek proselyte, under the guidance of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua (100-130 CE) (Megillah 3a) and into Aramaic by Onkelos, a Roman proselyte (perhaps also under the guidance of Rabbis Eliezer and Yehoshua (see Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 1:11)). But prior to that Yonathan ben Uziel, who lived during the century preceding the destruction in 70 CE of the second Temple, published Targum Yonathan, an Aramaic paraphrase of both the Chumash and the Prophets. Since this was a paraphrase, not merely a translation, Yonathan took liberties to interpolate other material into the text, and one of the items that he interpolated into his Aramaic version of Numbers 14:1 was a paraphrase of this reaction of God to the weeping of the Israelites. 

It intrigued me that Rashi, clearly knowledgeable about this lore, did not mention it at all in his comments on Numbers 14:1. Rashi does cite this quote, but in a different context. Psalm 106 contains a summary of the sojourns of the Israelites, and when it reaches the episode of the spies it says (Psalms 106:25-27) “And they murmured in their tents, they hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord. Therefore He swore concerning them that He would overthrow them in the wilderness. And that He would cast out their seed among the nations and scatter them in the lands.”” As this is a foreshadowing of the Diaspora which ensued after the destruction of the second Temple (see also Ezekiel 22:23), it is here that Rashi sees fit to mention God’s pronouncement about the 9th day of Av.

Al Madansky z”l, August 1998